The Logbook

It’s time we make it official. We’re happy to publicly announce the launch of FareHarbor in Australia and Canada!

After five years of growing our network in the US, we’re ready to show the world what we have to offer. We’re expanding our platform to accommodate more currencies, languages and time zones, so tour & activity providers all around the globe can join the FareHarbor family.

Let’s talk details. In addition to our standard pricing model, tour and activity providers in Canada and Australia will have access to our full suite of services. That includes our iOS app, global network of third-party distributors, recent releases like Sonar and item colors and essential features like advanced reporting, Google Analytics tracking and more.

Clients in Canada and Australia will also receive the same high standard of support, with personalized trainings, reservation transfers and customized Dashboard builds in addition to our friendly and dependable 24/7 helpline.

Our list of international companies is already growing quickly – and this is just the beginning! Stay tuned to see where else we’re popping up around the globe.

For more info on FareHarbor in your country, get in touch or email us at sales@fareharbor.com.

We’re heading back to Las Vegas for the Expedia Partner Conference! On December 6-7, we’ll be joining some of the biggest names in travel to celebrate the future of the industry. From consumer trends to travel marketing tools to emerging technologies, it’s going to be two full days of all things travel. And we. can’t. wait.

As a Silver Sponsor, we’ll have a booth at the conference. Make sure you find us there! Stop by the booth to spend a little time with our team, learn more about our product and swoop up some FareHarbor swag.

We’ll also be available for meetings all throughout the conference. If you’d like to set up a meeting with our team, email us at expediaconference@fareharbor.com.

You’re not too late! We promise. You can still grab a little extra business over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. And with 7 in 10 consumers predicted to shop over Black Friday weekend and a forecasted 47% increase in spending from 2016, you have a lot of reasons to get involved.

Our last-minute Black Friday tips are so simple, you can get them in motion before the day’s end. And if you’re already a FareHarbor client, we’re here to help make it happen.

1. Attract customers with promo codes.

Unlike major retail brands, tours and activities enjoy far less competition when it comes to promoting their Black Friday deals. While many in retail have taken to advertising their promotions as soon as the day after Halloween, you still have time to get your promotions up and running.

The most simple and common of which is the promo code. As the king of holiday promotions, promo codes are both simple and useful in driving customers to a specific purchase.

Use promo codes to pinpoint certain areas of your business. For example, if you just started offering a new tour that hasn’t gained traction, create a promo code that offers a discount for that specific tour. A special deal might be the incentive your customer needs to try something new.

Get customers to opt for a slightly higher price point by bundling two items together. Create a promo code for bundled items, like a kayak tour and a bike rental. You get the upsell, they get the deal. It’s a win-win.

Use valid or blackout dates to customize how your promo codes are used. You can even put this strategy to use to create a promotion that lasts from Black Friday to Cyber Monday by creating a separate offer for each day of the weekend, each with its own promo code. If you’re a FareHarbor client, we’d be happy to help you set this up.

As a FareHarbor client, you can create and manage promo codes directly through your Dashboard. Watch our detailed tutorial video to set up promo codes on your own, or reach out to our Technical Product Specialists and they’ll walk you through it.

Plus, if you run a seasonal operation or cut back on your availabilities during the winter months, it’s a simple way to guarantee future bookings as things slow down.

Customers tend to spend more than the card value. Especially if the card was received as a gift, it makes sense to the recipient to add a little of their own money on top of the gift card value (for, say, a photo package) since the experience costs them nothing otherwise.

Combine your gift card sales with a promotion. Instead of dealing with both promo codes and gift cards, try discounting your gift cards so customers purchase, say, a gift card with the value of $100 for $80.

Appeal to holiday shoppers by marketing digital gift cards as a package deal. Advertise a free hat or t-shirt with the purchase of a gift card—say one with more than a $50 or $100 value—so customers have a physical gift to pair with the digital purchase. Everyone loves unwrapping presents, after all.

If you’re a FareHarbor client wanting to try out digital gift cards for the first time, just get in touch and we’ll help you add them to your site. If you want to change or manage your gift cards, visit our help center for more info.

3. Now promote those promotions!

Once your promotions are in place, it’s time to get the word out. This is a great time to pull email lists of customers that have booked with you in the past, and of course, to put your social media sites to work. If you’re a FareHarbor client, you can use the Contacts report to view and download customers’ information as a CSV that can be uploaded to your favorite email marketing platform.

If you’re looking for more marketing tips to carry you all the way through the season, check out this blog post! There’s still plenty of time to ramp up your holiday marketing efforts.

When it comes to FareHarbor, online booking software is just the tip of the iceberg.

We understand that a ‘booking’ is really just another word for ‘customer’, and customers are the lifeline of any tour and activity business.

And while the customer experience might start with an online booking, there’s still a lot that needs to happen before the experience is complete. We’re here to help with that part too.

For example, communicating with your customer about where to meet or what to bring, quickly checking in big groups or multiple activities and staying organized so you can focus on what you do best – providing a memorable experience.

To give you a better idea of how an online booking software can be more of an everything software, we spoke to our friends at Chardonnay Sailing Charters. Each department at Chardonnay uses FareHarbor in their day-to-day workflow and each of them in an entirely different way.

Office Manager on reporting

“FareHarbor’s customizable reporting section has drastically cut down the amount of time I spend on reconciling our income on a daily and monthly basis. Having all of our company’s financial reporting readily available within any given search range has been extremely beneficial within many aspects of accounting. I couldn’t be happier with the reporting options that FareHarbor provides.”

Allison Green, Office Manager

Vessel Manager on scheduling maintenance

“Having access to our online sailing schedule has made it much easier for me to plan out when our vessels are available for maintenance. Prior to using FareHarbor, I would need to touch base with office staff on a daily basis to check in on boat availability. Now I can schedule my maintenance team in the click of a button.”

Adam Koch, Vessel Manager

Operations Manager on managing crew schedules

“Before FareHarbor, I would have to go through a paper copy of our monthly sailing schedule and pencil in crew members for each day, then give each crew member a paper copy of their schedule. Since our schedule is always changing, it was very challenging to keep the crew updated on all of the changes to their schedules on a day to day basis.

Now with FareHarbor, I am able to see a digital copy of each month’s sailing schedule and enter in crew with a click of a button. The best part about making the switch to FareHarbor is that our crew members now have 24/7 access to their schedules on any device and can see any changes in real time. I enjoy how efficient and dependable FareHarbor’s customer service department is when you need them.”

Courtney Scruggs, Operations Manager

Website Design Manager on customization

“I absolutely love how customizable FareHarbor is! Our old system would not allow us to customize anything. It was a cookie-cutter template, and did not allow our company to run as efficiently as it could because we were having to work around our reservation system.

Now with FareHarbor, we can customize the booking software to fit our company, and not have to customize our company fit a software that wasn’t made for it.”

Breanna Stremple, Website Design and Maintenance

Anonymous customer on online booking

“With the introduction of the new booking system, I have noticed that buying tickets and even gift certificates, has gotten much easier. I now can buy my family gift certificates through their online purchasing system and I don’t even need to call their office anymore. It is quick and very easy!”

Conversion rate: in a nutshell

You offer a great activity. People love it. You get a ton of people to your website. But only around 1% of people book online with you. Why?

At FareHarbor we are laser-focused on your website’s “online conversion rate.” So what is a conversion rate? In simple terms, if 100 people visit your website, and one person completes a booking, you have “converted” 1% of online visitors into paying customers. And thus you have a 1% conversion rate.

Now let’s break down how we optimize your conversion rate. When you think about conversion rate optimization, start by imagining all the people who visit your website. Now put them into three categories:

1) People who book,
2) People who don’t book but should have,
3) People who don’t book and shouldn’t have.

We don’t need to worry about #1. Similarly, we don’t care about #3. If you offer an activity for adventure seekers and someone looking for knitting needles lands on your website, there’s nothing your website can do to change the fact that they’re not there to book (that’s a different blog post on SEO).

We care a lot, however, about #2. People who are a perfect fit for your activity and didn’t book. Figuring out to motivate them to book is not so much a science as it is an artform that is judged by data.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes

You need to get into the head of the customer from group #2. Who are they? What kept them from booking?

The best conversion rate optimizers that I know are essentially method actors, pretending to be your target demographic while analyzing a conversion flow. You have to have a hypothesis before you prove or disprove it with data. Successful conversion rate optimizers tend to be incredibly empathetic; they’re able to put themselves in the online visitors’ shoes.

Getting a customer to convert online is very difficult.
There are a multitude of factors. The most important of which are “Trust” and “Ease of Checkout.”

Trust:

This is the easy one. Does your website appear trustworthy? Hi-res images, no typos, etc? Does your website feel like a place of commerce? A place where one could complete a booking online and have the confidence that they can show up at your activity location and you will know their name and be expecting them? Be skeptical and honest with yourself when looking at the “trust factor” of your website.

Ease of Checkout:

There are an infinite number of tools that we use at FareHarbor to ensure our client websites have a smooth, easy checkout and incredibly high performance. While most of them are a part of a larger conversation (with your FareHarbor Account Manager or marketing consultant) there are a few quick, simple and powerful conversion ‘tests’ that anyone can use to see how their website is working.

Our favorite test and its simple variations have been used to identify major business-boosting improvements. We have seen companies go 2.5x their conversion rate – one client did $1.8MM online in the 12 months prior to working with FareHarbor, and $4.5MM in the first 12 months of their partnership FareHarbor. The Clear Path Test, along with careful analysis from our conversion experts, contributed to this success.

The Clear Path Test

Imagine you are a specific demographic segment from your client base, then navigate through your website checking for a clear choice at every page.

Start with Mr. Midnight We have this character named Mr. Midnight who we imagine is trying to book with a company in the middle of the night. Let’s use “ABC Kayaks” for this example. So Mr. Midnight is on abckayaks.com because his brother said he “had to do ABC Kayaks when he was in town!”

Imagine Mr. Midnight’s dog is barking, and his wife, Mrs. Midnight is upset with him because their flight leaves in the morning and he was supposed to book this last week. ABC Kayaks offers 10 different activities but he doesn’t know what he wants to do (nor does he care).

Mr. Midnight already has an incredible glowing review of ABC Kayaks. He really just wants to book as quickly as possible. What’s the most popular option? Does your website guide Mr. Midnight at every stage of your website? Is there a clear call to action so that Mr. Midnight can checkout in under a minute to go take to dog out and diffuse the situation?

I know it seems unorthodox, but optimizing for Mr. Midnight is a great way to start thinking about your website. I love Mr. Midnight because he’s not going to call you. It’s the middle of the night. He’s either making that booking in 60 seconds, or he’s not coming with you at all.

Other ideas:

Families with children (of different quantities and ages)

Honeymooners

Bachelor/ette Parties

A group of 4 friends

And you can get as specific as you want. Look at your actual customers:

Two sisters who enjoy drinking wine outside

A husband booking ANY activity that will be good for 12 people at once

A family of four with nut allergies

You get the point. Once you’ve ran through every imaginable demographic, try the following add-ons/variations to The Clear Path Test:

The Zombie Test a.k.a. “The Blurry Eye Test”

Blur your eyes and make sure that the buttons and pages on your site that are most visible or prominent will lead any demographic through the checkout.

The Hold Your Breath Test

Do the Clear Path Test while holding your breath. You should be able to run through the entire checkout before you exhale.

The key is that we need to focus on group #2. People who would have a great time on your activity… but end up not booking. If you can pass The Clear Path Test again and again for ech different demographic, you will undoubtedly experience conversion rate growth in your direct channel.

Once you’ve passed these tests, talk to us about optimizing even further! All 180 employees at FareHarbor are strong conversion rate optimizers. It’s is in our DNA. The perfect team is a FareHarbor Account Manager working in tandem with a dedicated marketing or web team from your activity company (whether that’s in house or a 3rd party web marking firm).

Remember, Tours & Activities is not a zero sum game. There aren’t a finite amount of people going to activities each day. They’re deciding between doing an activity… and just going to the beach… or going out to lunch. By understanding the minds of our customers we can grow the global Tour & Activity industry.

It’s official. We’ve made it to the first week of October, which means the holiday season is just around the corner. To help you get in the spirit, we’ve put together a list of our top holiday marketing tips.

Make no mistake, these aren’t just any marketing tips. Different from other “Best Holiday Marketing Ideas” articles and blog posts you’ll find on the internet, these tips are specific to the tour and activity industry. Because we know there’s a big difference between selling picture frames and a photo-worthy experience. So tour operators, this one’s for you.

1. Embrace the holiday spirit.

The best marketing campaigns create an authentic, emotional bond with consumers. During the holidays, when feelings of togetherness and camaraderie are at their highest, building them into your marketing plan is a must.

Even a slight discount or extra offering is enough to draw in deal-minded customers. This is a great opportunity to capture consumers early on in the sales funnel, as the limited time offering and increased value ramp up the pressure to buy.

Elevate your weekend sale by using a website like Canva to create free, themed graphics for email banners, social media posts or Facebook advertisements. The added visual element makes customers more likely to click, share and purchase.

Promote engagement on your social media sites by allowing customers to unlock deals on Cyber Monday by liking your Facebook page, or reposting an Instagram post with a custom hashtag.

3. Ramp up customer communication.

The holiday season is notorious for bringing a flood of marketing emails to your inbox. And while no one wants their business to fade into the noise, the truth of the matter is this: you have to be proactive if you want to get noticed. You might want to double or even triple the frequency in which you contact customers. Put those email lists to use, and get your tour, activity or attraction in front of excited holiday shoppers.

Work with local businesses to create a holiday gift guide. Include other experiences in the area, local artisans, even restaurants or events with holiday promotions. You’ll gain the sharing power of the included businesses and get major bonus points for hitting on togetherness again.

No promotions? No problem. Send some holiday cheer in the form of a ‘Happy Holidays from our team to you’ email. A little customer appreciation goes a long way.

Use data from last year’s holiday promotions to find what worked best for your unique business. Dig into Google Analytics to help decide if email, social media or advertising deserves your focus.

4. Use geotargeting to attract the right customer.

If you aren’t already familiar with it, geotargeting refers to delivering content or advertisements based on a user’s geographic location. This is an incredibly useful and productive tool for getting in front of the right person at the right time. Both Facebook and Google offer geotargeting in their ad platforms.

Target people that live in your area or surrounding towns for things like gift cards that are less time sensitive and can be used well into the future. (FareHarbor clients: Message us about setting up digital gift cards!)

Facebook ads can target people traveling in your area too. Whether it’s to visit family or take a holiday vacation, they’re prime candidates for a fun, local experience. Go get ‘em!

Before you launch into any of these holiday marketing ideas, make sure your website’s user experience is dialed in. While good marketing will get the right customer onto your website, they still have to navigate to and through the booking process in order to make a purchase.Take this opportunity to make sure that your website is fully optimized for the ultimate user experience. And whatever you do, don’t forget – it’s the most wonderful time of the year.

There’s a lot of hype around what it takes to have great SEO. And while the tips and tricks you can find around the web might be true, it can really be as simple as good content and consistent delivery. To prove it to you, we’ve broken down three of the easiest, most user-friendly ways to improve your search engine ranking.

1. Build that blog.

A blog is a solid, market-tested way to bring in more business. Google and other search engines love websites that put out fresh unique content regularly.

The key word here is regular content. Blogs are not one-and-done ventures. While writing a single mind-blowing post might score you some serious social kudos and an increase in visits for a few days, the positive effects will wear off – and more quickly than you might expect.

To achieve sustained benefits, you should aim to include a new piece of content on your website at least once a week, preferably every day. This means more writing, which means fresh ideas for content.

Let the creative juices flow

Coming up with content ideas can be tricky without the proper tools. Which is why we’re letting you the ultimate blogger’s secret. A free and easy-to-use tool called Übersuggest.

Let’s pretend you just opened a snowmobile tour company in town. You’re excited about making sure the locals, as well as international visitors, choose your tours for their adrenaline fix. But you’re so busy running the new tours that you barely sleep, let alone have time to constantly whip up the ideas you need for your blog.

Übersuggest can help remedy your writer’s block by suggesting blog ideas based on just a few words. Follow these quick steps to try it out:

Press ‘Enter’ and bam! Your keyword search results appear. Pick a few and get to writing. Or, if you still can’t allot time to make this happen, hire a content writer or find a service that can help with this.

The anatomy of an SEO friendly blog post

Once you have a list of keywords you would like to target, you’ll want to structure your content for search engines and visitors.

URL: Try to include the most important keywords you are targeting in your blog post’s URL. Another tip? Minimize! Remove all numbers and symbols and stick to easy to read words. And check out this ultimate list of tips for search friendly URLs from our friends over at Moz.

Headlines/Titles:
Even if your blog post is full of valuable content, a mediocre headline may deter readers from reading it in the first place. When crafting your headlines, use the keywords you are trying to target while catching the reader’s attention.

Headlines that have numbers in them usually get shared more on Facebook and Twitter. A good example would be “The 5 Best Things to Do in Denver During The Winter”.

Meta descriptions:
Google uses the meta description on your page as a snippet when people search for keywords that are relevant to your page. This snippet copy is what will determine whether or not you get clicks, no matter how highly you rank in the search results.

For SEO purposes, the meta description should be 150 – 160 characters and usually appears like this in Google:

Have a FareHarbor site? Titles and meta descriptions are easy to set up in the Smart Crawl section of your site dashboard.

If you are not on a FareHarbor-built website, ask your web developer where to add this information. Depending on what CMS you use, you can find this information with a quick Google search.

Effective content:
When writing your content, make sure you are including the keywords you are targeting, preferably within the first 100 words of the page. Try to also include the same keywords in the last paragraph as well. But don’t overuse keywords by trying to fit them in many times as you can. Instead, think of some other keyword variations you can sprinkle throughout your post.

Related links:
Linking to other related pages on your site or other sites is not only great for user experience, it also strengthens your online presence. Linking out to other authority sites and pages is an indication that you value what other people create. Google will reward you for being in sync with their mission: organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible.

2. Add your business to local directories.

Another great way to bring in traffic is to post your business in local directories. The most important thing here is to make sure your Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) is exactly the same across all directories. MOZ local is a free tool that you can use to see how your business is listed online.

Check out this long list of directories that can help you rank locally:

Google My Business

Yellowpages.com

Yelp

SuperPages

CitySearch

Yahoo Local

Facebook

DexKnows

Manta

BBB.org

YouTube

City-Data

Yellowbook.com

Angieslist

MerchantCircle

ServiceMagic

You should also look for local directories specific to your city, like your local Chamber of Commerce.

3. Don’t underestimate your social media pages.

That’s right – social media can help with your SEO as well! While not a stand-alone SEO tactic, this is a great method to build Google’s confidence in your site. As your posts spread, it’ll lead to more people linking to you.

Over time, this will get more eyes on your content. Use hashtags to gain visibility for your initial rounds of syndication, and don’t hesitate to bring your content into existing threads and discussions. Doing so will improve your reputation as a leader in your industry, but more importantly, it will maximize your changes of being linked from other sources.

It’s also the perfect opportunity to involve yourself with your local community, sending location-specific authority signals to major search engines. Search Google for some local players, then try engaging with them on a regular basis.

You can share each other’s posts, get involved in each other’s discussions, or even post guest blogs on each other’s sites, and share them on your social channels.

Here’s a list of sites to keep your eye on:

Facebook

Instagram

Youtube

Reddit

Twitter

Linkedin

Meetup

Pinterest

Tumblr

Google+

Improving your search engine ranking is the key to long-term business success. Increasingly, customers rely on desktop and mobile platforms to research and book their activities. Getting your business in front of those searches is bound to grow your business.

Just remember – SEO can be simple. Now go get to work on that blog post.

We have a surprise: we’ve given our online support pages a makeover! Say hello to the brand new FareHarbor Help Center. There’s a fresh homepage, a smart prediction search bar, a new ticket submission form and so much more! (Go ahead and bookmark that page now – we know you’re gonna love it.)

To celebrate, we’re putting the spotlight on the heart of FareHarbor – the Support team! See what it’s like working in the Denver office, what the team’s favorite features are and the questions they get asked most often.

What do you like most about working at FareHarbor’s Denver office?

“Denver is a great city to live and work in. There are so many great opportunities to get outside and go adventuring. It helps for us to share the values of our clients and coworkers.”– Elle

“We interface with the majority of the FareHarbor departments since we are all under one roof! Oh, and tacos. Denver has great tacos.”
– Carolyn

“I love that most people are really supportive and try to ensure employees have opportunities to learn new skills and take on different roles. I learn something new everyday that blows my mind and keeps me on my toes. It’s honestly the most exciting environment to ever work in!”– Crystal

“Friendly folks, beer Fridays, location.”– Seth

“Denver is amazing with the mountains and weather and the people here are laid back and willing to work hard even if it is with a beer in their hand.”– Rachel

“The co-workers!”– James

“I love that it is very team oriented and things are always changing.”– Nicole

What’s your favorite feature on the Dashboard?

“My favorite feature is Reports. I love the potential to unlock projections and export to Excel. And now that we can easily group information in Reports, we can even show companies how to compare their most successful times of day and days of the week for each tour.” – Crystal

“Logic! Conditional custom fields make for very pretty book forms.”– Carolyn

“Resources!”– Seth

“Logic! The ability to have conditional custom fields is a lifesaver for a lot of companies.”– Rachel

“Logic, custom calendars and Reports.”– James

“I really like our Advanced Reports.”– Nicole

“I just discovered that you can create multiple time-slots at the same time in the availability creator and I am pretty excited about that – we used to have to build one time slot at a time, so it’s a big time saver!”– Elle

What’s the most common question you get about the Dashboard?

Working 24/7, 365 days a year, the Support team sees a lot of questions. Here are the ones that pop up most often (Tip: click the link to see the answer in the Help Center).

Tips from the people who know FareHarbor best.

“Less is more! Increase your booking conversions by making your book form short and sweet. And if you are ever unsure about how to go about that, our support team has some great tips!”– Carolyn

“My greatest tip is to check our snazzy help center and take time going over the help videos.”– Crystal

“Spend the time to get to know your Dashboard. The customizable abilities of the Dashboard still blow me away! Every company can have an entirely unique setup to help their business grow in a way that is best for them.”– Rachel

“Learning to “own” your dashboard is a great skill – feel free to ask questions if anything doesn’t make sense!”– James

“Don’t underestimate how much you can learn from the Help Center. There’s SO much info in there.”– Seth

“Bring a notebook to your initial training. There’s so much information that’s taught all at once, it really helps to have a few notes to help you remember.”– Nicole

“Every company is so unique, and each of your setups in FareHarbor are unique to you – when we ask questions it is because we are trying to learn what will work best for your distinct setup. Keep that in mind!”– Elle

For this week’s blog post, we’ve invited CTO Zach Snow to talk about one of FareHarbor’s biggest projects to date, Advanced Reports. Read on for a peek into how we tackled the process (plus, check out Zach’s personal blog for the full technical details).

Where we started

Long ago, in the early days of FareHarbor, there were no reports. There wasn’t even a calendar! But as we worked onsite with tour operators in Hawaii, Colorado, and beyond, we began to think of new ways we could display booking data to help clients monitor their business.

Our very first report, now known as Detailed Bookings, was designed to provide an easy way for business owners to get their booking information into another format. From there, we developed a few different reports based on lodging, employees, and activities, so that clients could answer common questions (like, “How many sunset cruises did I sell last month?”) quickly and easily.

In late 2016, we realized that the time had come to revisit reporting once again. Our clients had an abundance of interesting questions to answer, and the existing reporting tools made finding those answers harder than they should be. Plus, many of our reports were actually very similar — one was grouping bookings by activity, another by employee, and so on, but all shared a similar structure.

We knew that we could build a tool that was more general and at the same time more powerful. And as a bonus, we figured we’d make them faster, too!

Asking (and answering) the big questions

So we dug in. We worked directly with a number of clients that were struggling to answer important questions using the existing reports, developing an understanding of what information they were trying to find and why they were trying to find it.

We worked with Teddy Clements, Head of Onboarding at FareHarbor, to understand what challenges he faced when training clients how to run their business with FareHarbor.

We spoke with Anders Hester, Director of Customer Experience, to get a handle on the challenges existing customers were facing, particularly around understanding tax reporting.

We also reviewed the ways in which our existing customers were using reports, analyzing the data to determine which reports were run most, and in which ways.

Some of the most technically interesting questions revolved around payments. For instance, “How much money did I collect on Adult passengers this week?” This is a tricky question — if you have a booking with 2 adults and 1 child that costs $125.00 ($50.00 per adult, $25.00 per child) and you’ve only collected $50.00 on the booking so far, how much have you collected on Adults?

One answer is to prorate the amount you have collected across each customer (in this case, $20.00 on each adult, and $10.00 on the child). Another method is to apply the entire $50.00 to the first Adult on the booking. After researching with a variety of customers, and comparing to accounting software, we decided on prorating.

Our Product team asked and answered questions like these for weeks, with everyone on the FareHarbor team contributing a piece to the puzzle.

We worked around-the-clock to get it right. Even when the holidays came, and we all went our separate ways to be with family and loved ones, we couldn’t help but have reports on the mind!

Finally, the new and improved Advanced Reports

After weeks of hard work, the end result was a scalable design that can capture everything our previous reports could, but also go much further.

We can now organize data by almost anything (activity, booking source, lodging, campaign, check-in status, etc.), whereas previously these groupings were limited to a few fixed options.

Our ability to group data became much more flexible, allowing us to group by any number of options rather than just one or two.

We can now filter on almost every aspect of a booking and its customers, letting clients drill into the exact data they need.

And even better, as we discover or create new things to filter on, new things to group by, and new data to show, we have a framework for extending reporting to those things quickly and easily.

Actually building the software was a whole nother story, which you can read about in detail here (part 1 of a 3-ish part series).

At the end of the day, we created the recently-launched Advanced Reports, a true team effort. It’s faster and more powerful than the reports it replaced, and it’s designed for growth. And most importantly, it has been a huge success for our customers, who run tens of thousands of Advanced Reports every week!

Growing your business is good; growing your business strategically is even better. But how do you find time to research and compare your options, while still staying on top of your business? FareHarbor Connect is our way of making that path to growth easier.

We’ve taken all the guesswork out of connecting with third-party distributors by building a trusted network of partners and a feature set that makes it easy to maintain relationships with each and every one of them. Best of all, as a FareHarbor client, you have all these tools at your fingertips.

1. Integrate with Online Travel Agencies

When most businesses start looking for new ways to grow their customer base, they first turn to OTAs like Expedia or Viator. And with good reason – OTAs give you direct access to thousands of customers that might otherwise never find your business. Plus, they’re a great way to get your tours in front of qualified leads.

With FareHarbor Connect, working with OTAs is just as easy as accepting online bookings. (Read: you can do it in your sleep!)

Our booking integrations allow OTAs to resell your offerings in real-time availability, with all reservations appearing directly on your Dashboard as soon as they happen.

Using an API Integration or FareHarbor ‘Book Buttons’, you can start marketing your tours on our network of third-party channels without any manual booking entry on your end.

Bonus: Once you’ve earned a customer through an OTA, you can use an email marketing plan to encourage them to join you again.

2. Take Bookings Directly from Hotels & Concierge Desks

We took the same concept and applied it to our always growing network of hotels and concierge desks. Once added to FareHarbor Connect, local hotels and concierges also benefit from direct access to your real-time calendar.

This allows hotels and concierge desks to view your availability and book their guests directly into your tours, with all booking data flowing right into your Dashboard.

FareHarbor Connect’s real-time availability means you can be making a reservation in-person, a customer could be scheduling a tour online and your friends at a local hotel can be booking their guests in at the exact same moment, with no threat of overbooking.

Bonus: Curious about our hotel and concierge program? Our network might already be in your local area. Just ask!

3. Affiliate Reporting & Invoicing

Now that you’ve got the bookings, it’s time to crunch the data. All affiliate bookings can be tracked through your reports, so you’ll always know the source of your bookings.

Reports can also be used to calculate commissions on affiliate bookings and to generate invoices that help keep track of the balance between you and your partners.

Bonus: Use reports to keep a pulse on how your third-party channels are performing. Analyze which partners are delivering the most customers, what month or season each OTA performs the best and what portion of your overall revenue comes from third parties.

4. The FareHarbor Partner Program

Get even more local with our Partner Program. With the same ease of OTA or concierge bookings, our Partner Program is a network of FareHarbor clients in your area who’ve opted to resell tours and to have their tours resold at a commission rate.

Most of the reselling is done through ‘Book Buttons’ located in confirmation or follow-up emails. This gives local businesses easy access to customers that have booked or participated in local activities and might be on the market for another tour while they’re in the area.

It’s an awesome opportunity to support tourism in your local community, with the added bonus of earning a commission by referring customers to nearby companies.

Bonus: Remember, a returning customer has just as much value as a new customer. Make sure your follow-up emails are designed to re-engage the customer with links to review and social media sites in addition to our Partner Program.

5. The Channel Development Team

That’s right, we saved the best for last! FareHarbor has an entire team dedicated to building out and optimizing these affiliate features. Even better news? They’re always here to help. Please send any questions, ideas or projects related to third-party partnerships to support@fareharbor.com or to your Channel Development Associate. They’re always ready to help you grow your business.

Bonus: Our Channel Development Team works out of our Denver HQ. Even if you don’t have any third-party questions, you can still message them to say hi. (They’re really nice.)